20 ms·

ISPs can’t find any judges who will block California net neutrality law

376 points by zdw 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wrycoder 5y ago
> California's net neutrality law is similar to the federal rules repealed under former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. California prohibits ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful traffic. It also prohibits requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers, bans paid data cap exemptions (so-called "zero-rating"), and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality protections by slowing down traffic at network interconnection points. I don't understand how anyone could oppose this.
- adoxyz 5y ago
  Money.
- hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
  ‘Prohibits requiring fees’ do sound like weasel words
- bberenberg 5y ago
  I don't support this, but I can try to steel man this position. Largely it comes with the idea that use = cost, and that infrastructure has limited capacity and is therefore zeroish sum. For example, a common idea is that we should tax trucks more than other cars because they cause a large amount of damage to our roads. Following that logic, the companies that encourage users to consume more bandwidth should be charged a price for that since they're the ones making money on it, and we don't want to raise costs on users.
  - smw 5y ago
    But customers are already paying for 'unlimited internet' -- or for some amount of data up to a cap. You're suggesting that we should double charge the providers that the customers want to access, as well?
    - zhfliz 5y ago
      Telekom already does this for a very long time, at least in Germany. see for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10645577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10645577
      - unityByFreedom 5y ago
        Have there been no attempts in Germany at introducing net neutrality? Also, does the ISP who wrote that linked article, Hetzner, still support net neutrality? I can't find anything else in English about it since the linked article from 2015 (archive [1], and new link [2]), but maybe that's because other content hasn't been translated. > Hetzner Online stands for high-performance and high capacity Internet. In the last few years, our network infrastructure has expanded little by little in order to provide our customers with optimal performance. Currently, about two-thirds of our network traffic is directly exchanged with cost-neutral peerings of various partners. Among them are privat peerings with large network operators. > For this reason, we have been increasingly concerned with DSL and cable providers who have no open peering policy themselves but are also not connected to other Tier-1 carriers with sufficient capacities. During the peak traffic period of 7 pm to 10 pm in particular, the concerned DSL and cable providers hit their capacity limits and thereby impede the fluent data stream between individual networks. This has lead to increasing complaints from the providers' customers because the customers cannot access their servers with the level of performance that they are used to having from Hetzner Online. > These customers already paid for comprehensive and quick access to the Internet with their monthly DSL and cable fees. However, providers are no longer satisfied with just this source of profit. They now also want to collect revenue by charging large content providers fees for access to their network. For this reason, interfaces are being operated at their highest capacity -- to make paid access to the DSL and cable providers' networks attractive for content providers. The end consumer is then forced to pay double for unlimited access to the Internet. We at Hetzner Online do not support such policies and declare our support for full net neutrality. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150906025055/http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Double_Paid_Traffic/en https://web.archive.org/web/20150906025055/http://wiki.hetzn... (archive b/c the OP link is no longer accessible) [2] https://www.hetzner.com/presse-berichte/2015/01/156830 https://www.hetzner.com/presse-berichte/2015/01/156830 (article appears to have been amended)
  - kibwen 5y ago
    There are reasonable arguments to be made for allowing infrastructure providers to limit the ability of bad actors to consume extreme amounts of resources before they tragedy-of-the-commons the whole shebang for everyone else. But any such system has to acknowledge that qualifying as infrastructure means that society relies on it to function, which means that demand for the infrastructure is, at the low end, inelastic, which means that a typical market structure would make no sense. The conscientious way to do it is to determine what qualifies as a "reasonable" amount of consumption, then provide that level of consumption at a subsidized rate to all participants, then let market forces kick in if someone consumes more than that. Then the rub is to define "reasonable", which obviously the infrastructure providers shouldn't be allowed to do. There's no denying that the internet is essential communications infrastructure. And in this era of videoconferencing and work-from-home, the network should be built out such that everyone can stream good-enough-quality video at peak hours without congestion; that seems reasonable to me. The government should also guarantee the availability of this minimum level of service to all citizens. If the network can't handle that, then the infrastructure providers need to build it out. Of course, they will drag their feet and complain, but that's because companies are self-serving sociopathic AIs.
    - throw0101a 5y ago
      > There are reasonable arguments to be made for allowing infrastructure providers to limit the ability of bad actors to consume extreme amounts of resources before they tragedy-of-the-commons the whole shebang for everyone else. Except the "bad actors" are the ISP's customer. It's they who are asking for the bits to be sent. It's the ISP job to deliver the bits their customers requested. The streaming services are not dumping bits on to the network like a chemical plant polluting a river. The streaming services are sending bits that the ISP's customers requested. The streaming services are paying for their Internet connection, and ISP's customers are paying for their Internet connection, and it is the job of the ISP to connect the two. If you can't currently handle the traffic: * reduce the service that you offer, or * build a better network. The ISPs need to do their damn job.
      - d110af5ccf 5y ago
  - paxys 5y ago
    The solution for that is already in place – charge for bandwidth. If users pay $30 for 100 Mpbs or $60 for 500 Mpbs etc., and on top of it there are caps on total data consumed, where does the idea of further segmenting and prioritizing traffic even come from?
    - bberenberg 5y ago
      I think the question becomes who should be charged for bandwidth. The ISPs in this case are arguing they want to charge a small subset of above normal bandwidth consuming services rather than the ISP customers.
      - paxys 5y ago
        That's simply ISPs seeing a lucrative revenue stream and wanting in on it. Let's put company size and market cap out of the picture and think of the network architecture. I set up a server in Romania. Someone from USA makes a request to it and gets a response. Can their ISP (Comcast or AT&T or whoever else) now send me a bill at the end of the month?
        bberenberg 5y ago
        I agree that they're setting up a revenue stream. I also think that a business that charges customers on both sides isn't as crazy as you want it to be. For example, a customer of our pays SAP Ariba to be the SaaS for their procurement process. We also have to pay SAP Ariba to submit invoices to this customer. In your example I expect they wouldn't send you a bill for the request. I do expect they would send you a notice to join whatever program they run or they will stop routing to your server. Again, I don't agree with what the ISP is doing, but I can rationalize how they think it makes sense.
        unityByFreedom 5y ago
        > I don't agree with what the ISP is doing, but I can rationalize how they think it makes sense. It only makes sense if they perceive no backlash for overreaching. We need to look closely at what they are currently doing. They're expanding zero rating on mobile, and also on broadband in some areas by claiming that their network is "proprietary technology" and not subject to such net neutrality laws. Meanwhile, municipalities are prevented from building their own networks to compete with regional broadband monopolies. It's internet-highway robbery.
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    On the roads, we have a very rough estimate of the amount of the externalities of a given vehicle. On the Internet, we can have precise information on every bit of bandwidth consumed. Why not price the network equally for everyone?
    - fn-mote 5y ago
      > Why not price the network equally for everyone? It's not clear what this means. I guess in the context it means everyone pays the same unit rate per amount of data transferred? I think there's more subtlety than this. I pay more for a 100MBit connection than a 10MBit connection, and also pay more for the data transferred over those connections? Are they allowed to charge higher speed customers a lower unit rate?
      - bombcar 5y ago
        The question comes into play at the edges - when your ISPs upstream connection is filled what happens? Can they selectively drop packets or do they have to drop them randomly? And can you pay to be in a “never drop my packets” group?
        PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        The "American Way" for this is pretty simple to see: 1. the destination customer can pay themselves into a tier such as "never drop" 2. the source customer cannot That is, retain "money is power" for individuals but add a veneer of social respectability by denying Netflix etc. to just buy up the bandwidth.
        seanp2k2 5y ago
        The “American Way” of finding a good enough monopoly that one can afford to pay legislators to allow it to continue so long as taxpayers can be convinced that it’s not bad enough to favor a different candidate. Or, just get every candidate to support it! Then taxpayers have no choice and you win.
        5y ago
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    This fight is not so much about usage “bandwidth” as it is about ISPs who want to prioritize traffic depending on the source and whether the source is paying them an additional “priority” fee. Allowing them to do that creates an non-level playing field, which disadvantages the smaller sources that many users would be very interested to view.
    - ddingus 5y ago
      "Big sources" also want this because they do not want to have to compete with, or these days be called out by new sources. Look at YT and the hiding dislikes. That was all about establishment players being very widely and publicly disliked for poor quality information, outright lies in some cases. How did people know? Thos smaller sources able to get a lot of attention. The minute ISP's get to prioritize, they get to create near infinite artificial value by making endless deals about who gets what and when. Nobody but the ISP'S and establishment support that garbage. There is no value added to anyone, except the ISP's and establishment.
  - imgabe 5y ago
    Doesn't Netflix already pay on a usage basis for their bandwidth? If you run a small website that gets 100 users a month, you pay very little for bandwidth. If you run a video streaming site with millions of users you pay a lot. And the users also pay for the bandwidth to download. Exactly how many more times do the ISPs need to get paid?
    - seanp2k2 5y ago
      Taxpayers also paid ISPs to both deploy rural broadband and to upgrade existing infrastructure, so they’re getting paid 3x if you count that. Look up “The Book of Broken Promises”.
    - makomk 5y ago
      Not necessarily. Small websites have to pay for their bandwidth, but bigger companies like Netflix have been pushing ISPs into various schemes that give them that bandwidth for free, either through peering arrangements where ISPs take traffic to and from Netflix systems for free or through installing caching boxes in ISP facilities with the power, data and space paid for by the ISP.
      - imgabe 5y ago
        How? What leverage does Netflix have that would convince their ISP to give them free bandwidth? It seems like if Netflix were unable to upload the video to their customers, that would be pretty detrimental to their business.
  - monkeywork 5y ago
    In your example I'd say you have the following entities: * ISP = Government * Client = Driver * Netflix = Ford * Shows = Truck * Bandwidth = Roads The Government (ISP) taxes the Driver (Client) when they buy a Truck (watch shows) because that act puts stress on the Roads (Bandwidth). They do not put a special tax on Ford (Netflix) for simply offering a Truck (show) for sale. So if the ISP wants to get extra revenue from this they need to charge the client more as they use more bandwidth.
  - manquer 5y ago
    This incentivizes creation of artificial scarcity to squeeze more money. The entire industry is built on free peering unless traffic is very asymmetric for the most part. This is analogous to converting existing lanes to express lanes on highways, people are not going to pay if there is no congestion. The city makes more money removing a lane from regular use and also not investing further on road expansion / alternative routes.
  - lwkl 5y ago
    The road-tax is neutral, it doesn't matter what goods you transport. Imagine charging the producers of the most transported goods to pay a fee in addition to the road-tax and otherwise blocking their goods being transported for the rest of the month. Net neutrality asks the internet to work how road taxes work. You pay for a certain bandwidth (a truck) and you can transport whatever goods you want with that. It doesn't matter if you go to walmart 5 times a week or split your trips to costco, walmart and target. Or maybe whole foods has a deal with the state that makes the people driving trucks to them exempt from the additional fee.
    - bcgraham 5y ago
      Note that roads are not neutral in the “net neutrality” sense, since emergency vehicles are prioritized. There’s a cogent argument against net neutrality on similar grounds: i.e., prioritizing traffic with prioritized purpose, especially in the face of congestion.
      - jeroenhd 5y ago
        Networks aren't neutral either, even under net neutrality rules: you might lose your data uplink of the tower is at capacity and someone dials 911. I'm a proponent of weakening net neutrality for when lives are at stake, but that's hardly ever the case on the internet. The problem is that most non-neutral treatment is the result of business interests rather than the greater good.
      - zmgsabst 5y ago
        In what way is “emergency vehicles need special access” similar to “we need to charge Netflix more because ISPs oversold their networks while failing to upgrade”?
        ThunderSizzle 5y ago
        Toll roads charge more for larger vehicles. Vehicle registration may be more expensive for heavier vehicles or vehicles with more wheels. Meanwhile, toll roads may have just as much traffic issues and no guarantee of average velocity. How is that not similar to ISPs throttling? Not that I care much either way. I care more about localities and states encouraging or enforcing monopolies.
  - parkingrift 5y ago
    Bandwidth is already charged by consumption. What you’re suggesting here is to the idea that vehicles should be charged based on what they’re transporting. Sorry but that is preposterous. Weight is weight and should be considered as such. No cost preference for shipment of products that some private company likes.
  - RHSeeger 5y ago
    If I pay you to bring me a package from <somewhere else>, all is well. If 10 other people pay you to bring them packages from <somewhere else>, all is well. If 100 want to pay you to bring them packages from <somewhere else> and you suddenly don't have enough manpower to deliver those packages... do you suddenly start charging <somewhere else> because they have too many people that want packages? No, because that would be ridiculous.
    - shukantpal 5y ago
      No it wouldn’t be ridiculous because both the sender and receiver are customers here
  - imtringued 5y ago
    Your argument makes zero sense and is completely divorced from what you preach. I hate this direct form of hypocrisy. People pretend to be "righteous" and then act dishonest. Cloud providers already bill network traffic at extremely high prices. The cheap ones oversubscribe their connections, according to the motto "you get what you pay for". The current system is "use = cost". >For example, a common idea is that we should tax trucks more than other cars because they cause a large amount of damage to our roads. And this is exactly why we should have net neutrality. If there is net neutrality on roads then we can just tax by axle weight. If there is no net neutrality then road companies would come up with a weird classification system that is completely independent of axle weight. For example. S-Pedelecs in Germany are just unthrottled electric bicycles that go faster than 25km/h. They are basically classified as a moped even though they are much lighter. Road companies would then charge S-Pedelecs more because of what they are classified as instead of how much they weigh. Truck companies will then try to develop trucks that aren't classified as trucks to avoid those higher fees (VPNs). > Following that logic, the companies that encourage users to consume more bandwidth should be charged a price for that since they're the ones making money on it, and we don't want to raise costs on users. That makes no sense. Just charge all commercial internet connections by traffic or capacity (oversubscribing does not count). You are so far away from "use = cost" that it's not even funny. The amount of brain twisting that is going on here is insane.
- mdasen 5y ago
  Depending on how this is applied/interpreted, I could see reasons to oppose it. For example, there can be a lot of "lawful traffic" that is harmful to a network. T-Mobile's T&C say that these things are disallowed: "Uses applications which are designed for unattended use, automatic data feeds, automated machine-to-machine connections, or applications that are used in a way that degrades network capacity or functionality", "Uses applications which automatically consume unreasonable amounts of available network capacity". I'm sure someone here is going to "but fetching RSS automatically..." but I'm going to ignore those straw-man objections. If someone is doing something that harms the network and the enjoyment of other users, it does seem reasonable to restrict that. Likewise, many ISPs deprioritize data if a user has hit a certain threshold of usage. It isn't throttling, but they give priority to users who don't use as much data given the shared nature of the connection. That seems reasonable to me. It allows heavy users to use as much data as they want while light users aren't impacted by their heavy usage. Many mobile ISPs throttle types of content like video. That's certainly controversial, but has become common. > It also prohibits requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers This always makes me wonder if that means that ISPs must deliver free transit. Most people aren't really aware of how money is paid to transmit things over the internet. For example, let's say that I want to transmit a video to a Comcast customer in LA. Can I hand it off to them in NY and say "it's your problem now since you can't charge me to deliver the traffic"? Or do I have to get it within a certain distance of the customer and pay for the transit myself? If Comcast won't advertise BGP routes non-locally if someone isn't wiling to pay them transit, is that a violation? I know a lot of people say that they just want a "dumb pipe", but I think that's mostly because many companies are kinda scummy. We've seen ISPs do crappy things. But there is reasonable network management. For example, I've had friends who have worked at universities where 1% of the users end up consuming 50-75% of the bandwidth. They've done things like put BitTorrent traffic at a lower priority. They don't block it, but they do manage it so that the shared network works well for everyone. If a lab starts using a crazy amount of bandwidth, they don't want everyone else's usage to suffer. It's quite reasonable to manage traffic in good faith - and I think a lot of the no-management/dumb-pipe stuff comes from the fact that we've had some scummy ISPs.
  - wmf 5y ago
- jwommack 5y ago
  The primary beneficiaries of this are basically Netflix and Google, no? My understanding is most of these policies have always been targeted at the large streaming services that are putting the most burden on the networks and who often already have special interconnect agreements. The claims that these policies would be aimed at small businesses seem largely to have not been realistic. The whole situation with lying about what you’re ad spend is getting you seems like a much bigger small internet business issue.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    > My understanding is most of these policies have always been targeted at the large streaming services that are putting the most burden on the networks and who often already have special interconnect agreements. "large streaming services that are putting the most burden on the networks"? That is completely non-sensical. It is not streaming services that are creating a burden, it is the ISP's customers. The ISP's customers are asking for the bits. They are using their Internet service / connection to get what they want (video). Is HN 'causing' the traffic to flow over my ISP's pipes when I reply to comments, or is it me (the ISP customer) when I click on "reply"? The streaming services are not dumping bits on to the network like a chemical plant polluting a river. The streaming services are sending bits that the ISP's customers requested. If the ISPs can't deliver the traffic that their customers want then they need to architect their network to handle it. ISPs are selling access to the Internet, streaming service are on the Internet, and so ISPs need provide it or stop advertising that they're providing Internet access. The streaming services are paying for their Internet connection, and ISP's customers are paying for their Internet connection, and it is the job of the ISP to connect the two.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - moron4hire 5y ago
      But we (the ISPs) made assumptions about aggregate consumer bandwidth requirements back in the early 2000s and now they're cutting into shareholder value! Would someone please, PLEASE, think of the shareholders?!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- drdaeman 5y ago
  > and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality protections by slowing down traffic at network interconnection points Here's an anecdote. Over 10 years ago, I worked for an ISP company in Russia. That was before they went draconian on the 'Net (beyond SORM-2, I mean) - I left around the time Russian government started to mandate blocking websites. Just to clarify - that was an age of rapid growth and users had a choice of ISPs (I had 7 possible to pick from), so providers had competed really seriously. Which is why net neutrality wasn't a thing - on the contrary, providers were incentivized to set up local FTP servers. Uh, y'know, for warez, though, of course, officially ISPs just "didn't knew" what users were doing there - but that was before streaming services; even Steam was quite a novelty at the time. Those FTPs had faster access speeds (traffic shaping was turned off for their IPs entirely, so up to 100Mbps when 10Mbps connectivity was the norm) and unaccounted traffic. It was mutually beneficial - providers had saved (a lot) on uplink utilization and customers had exchanged content at much faster speeds. In '00s there were even citywide LANs communities, which were torn down only because of malware onset. Those were wild times. Doing some funky shit like throttling certain traffic meant your users would be gone (people tolerated for a short while, then voted with their wallets). But we had to do this twice. First time it was disaster management, when the first uTP implementation happened. Users had updated their uTorrents and it was buggy and caused very high packet rate (and this is UDP we're talking about), so our edge routers started to choke on this UDP BitTorrent traffic. We had to identify those packets and push a rule that dropped them entirely. Second time was also about BitTorrent - in an university dorm, where we contracted to set up WiFi coverage - I don't remember the details but we had really struggled ensuring fair bandwidth distribution, as someone torrenting made network barely usable for others (because of radio interference, not bandwidth limitations), but we had to tune it down to make it work somehow. Another story from those times. We had started to receive tons of complaints that YouTube was performing poorly. We've spent days trying to figure out what the heck was wrong there, and realized the problem was only manifested through one of the upstream providers. They had no clue either, so the temporary solution was to push a a bunch of excessive AS-PATH elements in BGP announce to deprioritize routing YouTube traffic from that direction, then wait until someone upstream figures it all out. And yet another story is that we ran analytics (anonymized, we only looked at very coarse AS level traffic distribution) to understand where we talked to most and if we should peer with someone else to improve connectivity in those directions. And, of course, we had blocked ports, such as tcp/25 or tcp/445. Would've been a disaster if we wouldn't have. The morale of this is that as an ISP sometimes you have to violate neutrality in the interest of your customers, to ensure quality of service. Well, to think of it - QoS is inherently non-neutral since the whole point of it is to classify traffic and differentiate it. And sometimes it's hard to draw a line on what's fair and what's not. I mean, I questioned some things we did and only justified them as "well, I don't see any other options here to make it work". And I don't condone nor condemn those examples - just present them as an anecdote to say that there are always some nuances and sometimes things aren't exactly black and white. Though when people speak about NN in the US they talk about shitty anti-customer moves like throttling Netflix trying to squeeze some money out of this.
- RajT88 5y ago
  I know a fellow who works sales for a fiber backbone provider. He has a few tortured and circuitous arguments why it is totally fine. He is full of funny ideas which are silly. Often including long debunked ideas on race, gender, class, etc. Yes, he was born rich. How did you know?
- jollybean 5y ago
  "prohibits requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers" This is not 'Net Neutrality'. If data providers like Netflix want 'special service' then they can pay for it. 'Net Neutrality' is more like Carriers cannot charge more for email, than for games, than for messaging, than for something else. Carriers should be able to charge whatever they want for whatever QoS (Quality of Service). If Netflix wants more bandwidth with lower latency, fine, they can pay for that. But Carriers cannot arbitrary charge 'more' to Netflix because they are 'richer' or because of the type of content. Federal legislation needs to go further and separate content form data networks. AT&T has a vast Content Empire that is in direct competition with Netflix, this is a gigantic conflict of interest. AT&T can sell bytes of data at a quality of service. That's it. Maybe phones - so long as those phones can work on any network and other phones work on it's network. Content? No way. Same with cable distributors. And more difficult to articulate but Apple shouldn't be able to compete with those in the App Store, for example and by law be very 'neutral' there as well: they have to treat everyone the same.
  - monkeywork 5y ago
    >If Netflix wants more bandwidth with lower latency, fine, they can pay for that. Why should Netflix pay for this? They aren't the one choosing to send traffic onto that network, the ISPs CLIENTS are. The ISP shouldn't have any ability to charge Netflix for actions their clients are taking - and they should have to treat all traffic that a client asks for equally. Can you imagine an electric company trying to get some sort of fee from Samsung because they sell a lot of electronics that people use in their houses...
    - jollybean 5y ago
      Netflix pays for connectivity just like consumers do. They can pay for better QoS, which will result in better QoS for their customers if they want. Or their customers can, or both. "Can you imagine an electric company trying to get some sort of fee from Samsung because they sell a lot of electronics that people use in their houses..." That analogy doesn't work because Samsung, in that case, has nothing to do with the data flow. Netflix obviously does. Netflix should not have to pay special fees because they are 'Netflix' or 'it's video' or 'it's movies' - but they should definitely have to pay fees relevant to QoS of their upload bandwidth. Just like you, I and everyone else.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  I like T-Mobile's zero-rating solution. Specific classes of data (sub-480p video) would be zero rated for all servers who filled out paperwork, no source-based discrimination. That made sense. Also, kinda obviously, government emergency services (911, weather alerts, etc) being zero-rated just make sense. I don't want zero rating to let FB subsidize plans that allow free access to FB. I think we can find some uses that avoid dystopia.
  - Bilal_io 5y ago
    Well, I'd like my ISP to get their nose out of my traffic and stop sniffing like a coke addict. One of Net Neutrality arguments is that you sell me speed (and bandwidth where data caps apply, but shouldn't) and I can do whatever I want. It is I, that pays for the service, not Netflix nor Google or any platform, and if I want to watch YouTube in 4K because my speed allows me to, or if I want to turn my PC into a seeding machine for Linux iso images, I should be free to do so. So there is an argument for DNS-over-HTTPS there on top of the NN one.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      It doesn't stop you from watching in 4K video. It just provides another option. But critically, this is an option that you, the customer, negotiate with T-Mobile. You contract for X gigs plus unlimited sub-480p traffic. And tiered data (X gigs of high-speed, Y or infinite gigs of low speed) is really common in cellphone contracts. This is just making it clear you can get the low speed data without having to burn your high speed up first.
      - vel0city 5y ago
        > X gigs of high-speed, Y or infinite gigs of low speed But then why even bother with the paperwork to get approved to be a part of the program? Why doesn't T-Mo just ignore usage below some average throughput speed for any traffic?
        HWR_14 5y ago
- dehrmann 5y ago
  > I don't understand how anyone could oppose this. Easy. If you operate a cell network, your bandwidth is extremely limited, so when it's congested, you throttle streaming video content so everything else is still fast. The same problems affect wired ISPs, but it's easier to run more fiber (often from a local office, not to homes) than to get more spectrum, install more towers, or create the next generation of wireless broadband. The easiest, absurd case of cell networks falling over is at music festivals. They just don't have the bandwidth to handle thousands of people in a small area.
  - beowulfey 5y ago
    Operating costs for upgrading networks are obviously better served going into increasing net profits than actually building improved infrastructure. From a capitalist point of view it just makes good business sense to lobby for not having to upgrade the networks because people have no (or at least very few) competitors they could turn to as alternatives.
- wodenokoto 5y ago
  Recently I ran out of mobile data, and using my phone providers app, I couldn’t buy any additional data, because I had no data left to connect to them. There are definitely circumstances where it makes sense to give users free access to data, just like how it makes sense that you can call toll free numbers. The opportunity for abuse is probably large enough to warrant that we can’t have nice things.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    Your ISP is not charging itself to connect to you.
- nijave 5y ago
  Afaik there was some somewhat legitimate concern it would effect mixed content networks. E.g. networks that carry voice, video, and internet or networks that provide different "tiers" (business vs consumer) Theoretically it should make access cheaper by allowing ISPs oversubscribe networks while still guaranteeing performance to certain customers but, in practice, I find it highly unlikely that savings would ever get passed on to the customer (instead converted into "shareholder value")
IMcD23 5y ago
Permalink: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-any-judges-who-will-block-california-net-neutrality-law/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-a...
- dang 5y ago
  Fixed above. Thanks!
prirun 5y ago
Don't worry, they'll find one. Just haven't flashed the right amount of money in front of one yet.
- vmception 5y ago
  And they have an infinite time horizon and attention span while we do not
CoastalCoder 5y ago
Can someone explain a technical issue I see with net neutrality? From a network engineering perspective, it seems sensible to me that CDN servers are located as close as possible to end users. So I assume that implies residing in whatever data centers the ISPs use at their edge. Is there some way to get the networking-efficiency benefits of those colo arrangements while still having net neutrality?
- wmf 5y ago
  Most definitions of net neutrality simply don't prevent ISPs from hosting CDN nodes (although it would be nice if ISPs treated all CDNs the same). Likewise net neutrality doesn't prohibit direct connections between broadband ISPs and content providers because such connections generally benefit everyone involved.
- eikenberry 5y ago
  > Is there some way to get the networking-efficiency benefits of those colo arrangements while still having net neutrality? Torrent-like algorithms do this. They localize the content while maintaining neutrality of services.
- arjvik 5y ago
  I'm not sure I understand - why is edge datacenter colocation incompatible with bet neutrality? Fairly confident it existed pre-Ajit Pai.
- randrews 5y ago
  I've been asking this exact question for years. I feel like most people got some well-meaning propaganda on this and see net neutrality as an anti-censorship thing (which, hooray for anti-censorship) without thinking through all the totally reasonable and useful things that would violate the letter of it.
  - CyberRabbi 5y ago
    I don’t fully understand how anti-censorship is a virtue when defending Google and Netflix but then becomes a vice when defending regular people’s ability to not be arbitrarily banned on Twitter.
hateful 5y ago
If I remember correctly, the issue with Net Neutrality legislation (as with almost all legislation) isn't what you think it is. It had to do with services like Netflix being able to host servers within ISPs to make them close to the end users. Not sure what article I had read though, it was quite a few years back.
- wmf 5y ago
  There have been several real issues not just one, but I don't think colocation was one of them.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Collocation is how Netflix solved the actual problem which was ISPs not wanting to give additional free transit to Level3.
paxys 5y ago
The link doesn't go anywhere FYI. What are people here even commenting on?
- wallbrownf 5y ago
  I couldn't get anywhere on the provided URL either. I believe this is the correct URL. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-any-judges-who-will-block-california-net-neutrality-law/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-a...
- ademarre 5y ago
  As IMcD23 commented, the real link is here: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-any-judges-who-will-block-california-net-neutrality-law/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-a... It would be nice if the mods/dang would update the link.
  - altairprime 5y ago
    Consider emailing the mods/dang using the Footer contact link, so that they're aware of this problem and can resolve it.
  - intunderflow 5y ago
    I'm not sure who has the power to edit titles / links, I've had weird (incorrect) edits to them as well One time one of my post's titles was changed from "end-to-end encryption" to "end-to-encryption encryption"
- dang 5y ago
  Fixed now. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31118005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31118005.
jmyeet 5y ago
The whole net neutrality saga just exposed the deep regulatory capture between ISPs and the FCC (the Republican Commissioners at least). Pai's argument for repealing net neutrality was that it wasn't a Federal government concern. That was originally what prompted California to institute these rules. But suddenly it wasn't a state issue either. Weird. The US has some of the most expensive Internet access in the world. In most places it's pretty crap too. Many places have no competition. Some providers are in clear breach of contract in not providing customers service as they promised to do. But apparently all that's not enough. We get the argument that the likes of Netflix are "pushing" their data at no cost onto "their" network. This is such a ridiculous argument and is nothing more than an effort to extort Netflix and other streaming services because it's eroding their cable TV services. No one is "pushing" data onto the network. Customers are pulling that data and those customers, by definition, are already paying for the bandwidth and the network access. But this doesn't stop lobbyists pushing this narrative onto Luddite elected officials. It's double-dipping. No more, no less. I really hope CAlifornia's net neutrality laws stand and get copied by other states.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  >Customers are pulling that data and those customers, by definition, are already paying for the bandwidth Downloading bandwidth is free. The person who is uploading is the person who pays.
  - unityByFreedom 5y ago
    You might get that deal on a server, but not a mobile or broadband contract. Now that I think of it, I don't know whether my capped mobile usage counts uploads towards my contracted limits. I assume it does.
    - charcircuit 5y ago
      From my understanding this will still apply to the ISP you are using for mobile or broadband. How ISPs push along these costs to their customers is up to them, but that is different from the price of sending data between an ISP and Netflix for example.
unityByFreedom 5y ago
The link here appears to be broken. Here is the correct one, fyi @dang https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-any-judges-who-will-block-california-net-neutrality-law/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-a...
- altairprime 5y ago
  @dang doesn't actually do anything to get Dang's attention. You can write the mods using the footer Contact link to ask them to fix the link, though.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- dang 5y ago
  Thanks! Fixed now. The submitted URL (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-any-judges-who-will-block-california-net-neutrality-law/#p3 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-a...) did a weird redirect. (altairprime is correct btw. I just saw this by accident.)
JJMcJ 5y ago
A few ISPs, like Sonic, maintain neutrality by their own policies. Then I read not only of throttling but of horrors like replacing ads on websites with different ones that pay the ISP.
- RealStickman_ 5y ago
  That's why every website should use HTTPS.
  - brezelgoring 5y ago
    I don't know if that would change things, they know the whole SSL Handshake by virtue of being the ISP. I'm not sure anything can save you here.
    - Cerium 5y ago
      I think the point of SSL is that parties in the middle with full view of the communications still cannot view or manipulate payload.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      That's a man in the middle attack. What's absurd is that the ISP you are paying is doing the attack.
    - RealStickman_ 5y ago
      That would only be possible if they proxy your connections and you have accepted their certificate. The entire point of SSL is to create an End-to-End encrypted connection between you and your target server. That includes anyone who can view and try to manipulate your traffic.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
iaw 5y ago
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-any-judges-who-will-block-california-net-neutrality-law/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-a... <-- correct link
- dang 5y ago
  Fixed above. Thanks!
jimjames88 5y ago
dalbasal 5y ago
Net neutrality really highlights the ratchet effect that arises wherever a conflict of interest between the general public and special interests exists. They never stop. Legislative lobbying. Massive Legal efforts. Attempts at influencing the executive/government activities. Once they've made a gain, they rarely lose it.
Proven 5y ago
OGforces 5y ago
[dead]
username190 5y ago
For those who are thinking, "why do we need Net Neutrality? When have you actually seen an example of providers throttling content?" - there's a pretty egregious one that's been present for years now. For those with American mobile phone plans, switch over to LTE or 5G, and run two "speed tests": One on Ookla Speedtest[0], and one on Netflix's fast.com[1]. If you don't have the top-tier plan on T-Mobile or AT&T, or have the $10/line "Premium Streaming" addon on Verizon (which pushes, but doesn't remove, the throttle), your speeds on Speedtest should appear quite a bit faster than on Netflix. If you're seeing very low speeds on both tests, there's more likely something else at play (wireless interference, circuit congestion, poor signal, etc). California's Net Neutrality law specifically outlaws this practice, and this is one of the big reasons carriers are upset about it. I'd recommend reading the text [2] of the law - it's fairly short and easy to understand, with definitions provided. [0] https://speedtest.net https://speedtest.net [1] https://fast.com https://fast.com [2] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB822 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
exabrial 5y ago
Net Neutrality is the greatest example of two sides that want the same outcome but can't get past their petty differences. The only reason Republicans want this blocked is because they see the writing on the wall when the state gets totalitarian control over communication (oddly enough, playing out right now in Russia). Democrats don't want to do deal with the Monopolistic behavior of ISPs, which is just an alternate version of totalitarian control. The common solution to appease both sides: break up the fucking monopolies into small township sized chunks. Both sides would support it. Why this is so hard?
- otachack 5y ago
  Because they're at each other's throats and not willing to cross the aisle to avoid political blowback from their own side. The state of this country is a shame and we obviously need support for more parties with diversified political viewpoints.
matt321 5y ago
Why shouldn't a company or person be discriminated against based on content type? content type is not a protected category. Ultimately, net neutrality is good for the rich since it lower their cost so it will all be supported by the gov. If you people didn't already know, the the rich are the ones who make the calls in the USA. I don't want to bring them down though, I want to elevate my self to their level.
MR4D 5y ago
Net neutrality sucks for one reason - it makes paid fast lanes illegal. Hear me out . . . A connection to the internet should be basically a dumb pipe, not filtering, accelerating, or slowing down anything. However . . . An ISP should be able to have a side-pipe to a specific service that provides for unregulated access to something thru that pipe. For instance you might watch Netflix all the time and want to pay a couple bucks for a side-pipe access to Netflix at a consistent throughput. Or maybe you work in finance and want access to Bloomberg, or Fidelity. Or maybe you work remotely and would love to access your Microsoft email and SharePoint with higher upstream throughput. Or maybe you’re a gamer and want a lower latency link to your game. Why can’t you have that? It is things like that which drive me crazy. The intent of the law is great but the implementation is lacking.

376 points by zdw 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

> California's net neutrality law is similar to the federal rules repealed under former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. California prohibits ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful traffic. It also prohibits requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers, bans paid data cap exemptions (so-called "zero-rating"), and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality protections by slowing down traffic at network interconnection points. I don't understand how anyone could oppose this.

adoxyz 5y ago
Money.
hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
‘Prohibits requiring fees’ do sound like weasel words
bberenberg 5y ago
I don't support this, but I can try to steel man this position. Largely it comes with the idea that use = cost, and that infrastructure has limited capacity and is therefore zeroish sum. For example, a common idea is that we should tax trucks more than other cars because they cause a large amount of damage to our roads. Following that logic, the companies that encourage users to consume more bandwidth should be charged a price for that since they're the ones making money on it, and we don't want to raise costs on users.
- smw 5y ago
  But customers are already paying for 'unlimited internet' -- or for some amount of data up to a cap. You're suggesting that we should double charge the providers that the customers want to access, as well?
  - zhfliz 5y ago
    Telekom already does this for a very long time, at least in Germany. see for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10645577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10645577
    - unityByFreedom 5y ago
      Have there been no attempts in Germany at introducing net neutrality? Also, does the ISP who wrote that linked article, Hetzner, still support net neutrality? I can't find anything else in English about it since the linked article from 2015 (archive [1], and new link [2]), but maybe that's because other content hasn't been translated. > Hetzner Online stands for high-performance and high capacity Internet. In the last few years, our network infrastructure has expanded little by little in order to provide our customers with optimal performance. Currently, about two-thirds of our network traffic is directly exchanged with cost-neutral peerings of various partners. Among them are privat peerings with large network operators. > For this reason, we have been increasingly concerned with DSL and cable providers who have no open peering policy themselves but are also not connected to other Tier-1 carriers with sufficient capacities. During the peak traffic period of 7 pm to 10 pm in particular, the concerned DSL and cable providers hit their capacity limits and thereby impede the fluent data stream between individual networks. This has lead to increasing complaints from the providers' customers because the customers cannot access their servers with the level of performance that they are used to having from Hetzner Online. > These customers already paid for comprehensive and quick access to the Internet with their monthly DSL and cable fees. However, providers are no longer satisfied with just this source of profit. They now also want to collect revenue by charging large content providers fees for access to their network. For this reason, interfaces are being operated at their highest capacity -- to make paid access to the DSL and cable providers' networks attractive for content providers. The end consumer is then forced to pay double for unlimited access to the Internet. We at Hetzner Online do not support such policies and declare our support for full net neutrality. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150906025055/http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Double_Paid_Traffic/en https://web.archive.org/web/20150906025055/http://wiki.hetzn... (archive b/c the OP link is no longer accessible) [2] https://www.hetzner.com/presse-berichte/2015/01/156830 https://www.hetzner.com/presse-berichte/2015/01/156830 (article appears to have been amended)
- kibwen 5y ago
  There are reasonable arguments to be made for allowing infrastructure providers to limit the ability of bad actors to consume extreme amounts of resources before they tragedy-of-the-commons the whole shebang for everyone else. But any such system has to acknowledge that qualifying as infrastructure means that society relies on it to function, which means that demand for the infrastructure is, at the low end, inelastic, which means that a typical market structure would make no sense. The conscientious way to do it is to determine what qualifies as a "reasonable" amount of consumption, then provide that level of consumption at a subsidized rate to all participants, then let market forces kick in if someone consumes more than that. Then the rub is to define "reasonable", which obviously the infrastructure providers shouldn't be allowed to do. There's no denying that the internet is essential communications infrastructure. And in this era of videoconferencing and work-from-home, the network should be built out such that everyone can stream good-enough-quality video at peak hours without congestion; that seems reasonable to me. The government should also guarantee the availability of this minimum level of service to all citizens. If the network can't handle that, then the infrastructure providers need to build it out. Of course, they will drag their feet and complain, but that's because companies are self-serving sociopathic AIs.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    > There are reasonable arguments to be made for allowing infrastructure providers to limit the ability of bad actors to consume extreme amounts of resources before they tragedy-of-the-commons the whole shebang for everyone else. Except the "bad actors" are the ISP's customer. It's they who are asking for the bits to be sent. It's the ISP job to deliver the bits their customers requested. The streaming services are not dumping bits on to the network like a chemical plant polluting a river. The streaming services are sending bits that the ISP's customers requested. The streaming services are paying for their Internet connection, and ISP's customers are paying for their Internet connection, and it is the job of the ISP to connect the two. If you can't currently handle the traffic: * reduce the service that you offer, or * build a better network. The ISPs need to do their damn job.
    - d110af5ccf 5y ago
- paxys 5y ago
  The solution for that is already in place – charge for bandwidth. If users pay $30 for 100 Mpbs or $60 for 500 Mpbs etc., and on top of it there are caps on total data consumed, where does the idea of further segmenting and prioritizing traffic even come from?
  - bberenberg 5y ago
    I think the question becomes who should be charged for bandwidth. The ISPs in this case are arguing they want to charge a small subset of above normal bandwidth consuming services rather than the ISP customers.
    - paxys 5y ago
      That's simply ISPs seeing a lucrative revenue stream and wanting in on it. Let's put company size and market cap out of the picture and think of the network architecture. I set up a server in Romania. Someone from USA makes a request to it and gets a response. Can their ISP (Comcast or AT&T or whoever else) now send me a bill at the end of the month?
      - bberenberg 5y ago
        I agree that they're setting up a revenue stream. I also think that a business that charges customers on both sides isn't as crazy as you want it to be. For example, a customer of our pays SAP Ariba to be the SaaS for their procurement process. We also have to pay SAP Ariba to submit invoices to this customer. In your example I expect they wouldn't send you a bill for the request. I do expect they would send you a notice to join whatever program they run or they will stop routing to your server. Again, I don't agree with what the ISP is doing, but I can rationalize how they think it makes sense.
        unityByFreedom 5y ago
        > I don't agree with what the ISP is doing, but I can rationalize how they think it makes sense. It only makes sense if they perceive no backlash for overreaching. We need to look closely at what they are currently doing. They're expanding zero rating on mobile, and also on broadband in some areas by claiming that their network is "proprietary technology" and not subject to such net neutrality laws. Meanwhile, municipalities are prevented from building their own networks to compete with regional broadband monopolies. It's internet-highway robbery.
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  On the roads, we have a very rough estimate of the amount of the externalities of a given vehicle. On the Internet, we can have precise information on every bit of bandwidth consumed. Why not price the network equally for everyone?
  - fn-mote 5y ago
    > Why not price the network equally for everyone? It's not clear what this means. I guess in the context it means everyone pays the same unit rate per amount of data transferred? I think there's more subtlety than this. I pay more for a 100MBit connection than a 10MBit connection, and also pay more for the data transferred over those connections? Are they allowed to charge higher speed customers a lower unit rate?
    - bombcar 5y ago
      The question comes into play at the edges - when your ISPs upstream connection is filled what happens? Can they selectively drop packets or do they have to drop them randomly? And can you pay to be in a “never drop my packets” group?
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        The "American Way" for this is pretty simple to see: 1. the destination customer can pay themselves into a tier such as "never drop" 2. the source customer cannot That is, retain "money is power" for individuals but add a veneer of social respectability by denying Netflix etc. to just buy up the bandwidth.
        seanp2k2 5y ago
        The “American Way” of finding a good enough monopoly that one can afford to pay legislators to allow it to continue so long as taxpayers can be convinced that it’s not bad enough to favor a different candidate. Or, just get every candidate to support it! Then taxpayers have no choice and you win.
      - 5y ago
- wrycoder 5y ago
  This fight is not so much about usage “bandwidth” as it is about ISPs who want to prioritize traffic depending on the source and whether the source is paying them an additional “priority” fee. Allowing them to do that creates an non-level playing field, which disadvantages the smaller sources that many users would be very interested to view.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    "Big sources" also want this because they do not want to have to compete with, or these days be called out by new sources. Look at YT and the hiding dislikes. That was all about establishment players being very widely and publicly disliked for poor quality information, outright lies in some cases. How did people know? Thos smaller sources able to get a lot of attention. The minute ISP's get to prioritize, they get to create near infinite artificial value by making endless deals about who gets what and when. Nobody but the ISP'S and establishment support that garbage. There is no value added to anyone, except the ISP's and establishment.
- imgabe 5y ago
  Doesn't Netflix already pay on a usage basis for their bandwidth? If you run a small website that gets 100 users a month, you pay very little for bandwidth. If you run a video streaming site with millions of users you pay a lot. And the users also pay for the bandwidth to download. Exactly how many more times do the ISPs need to get paid?
  - seanp2k2 5y ago
    Taxpayers also paid ISPs to both deploy rural broadband and to upgrade existing infrastructure, so they’re getting paid 3x if you count that. Look up “The Book of Broken Promises”.
  - makomk 5y ago
    Not necessarily. Small websites have to pay for their bandwidth, but bigger companies like Netflix have been pushing ISPs into various schemes that give them that bandwidth for free, either through peering arrangements where ISPs take traffic to and from Netflix systems for free or through installing caching boxes in ISP facilities with the power, data and space paid for by the ISP.
    - imgabe 5y ago
      How? What leverage does Netflix have that would convince their ISP to give them free bandwidth? It seems like if Netflix were unable to upload the video to their customers, that would be pretty detrimental to their business.
- monkeywork 5y ago
  In your example I'd say you have the following entities: * ISP = Government * Client = Driver * Netflix = Ford * Shows = Truck * Bandwidth = Roads The Government (ISP) taxes the Driver (Client) when they buy a Truck (watch shows) because that act puts stress on the Roads (Bandwidth). They do not put a special tax on Ford (Netflix) for simply offering a Truck (show) for sale. So if the ISP wants to get extra revenue from this they need to charge the client more as they use more bandwidth.
- manquer 5y ago
  This incentivizes creation of artificial scarcity to squeeze more money. The entire industry is built on free peering unless traffic is very asymmetric for the most part. This is analogous to converting existing lanes to express lanes on highways, people are not going to pay if there is no congestion. The city makes more money removing a lane from regular use and also not investing further on road expansion / alternative routes.
- lwkl 5y ago
  The road-tax is neutral, it doesn't matter what goods you transport. Imagine charging the producers of the most transported goods to pay a fee in addition to the road-tax and otherwise blocking their goods being transported for the rest of the month. Net neutrality asks the internet to work how road taxes work. You pay for a certain bandwidth (a truck) and you can transport whatever goods you want with that. It doesn't matter if you go to walmart 5 times a week or split your trips to costco, walmart and target. Or maybe whole foods has a deal with the state that makes the people driving trucks to them exempt from the additional fee.
  - bcgraham 5y ago
    Note that roads are not neutral in the “net neutrality” sense, since emergency vehicles are prioritized. There’s a cogent argument against net neutrality on similar grounds: i.e., prioritizing traffic with prioritized purpose, especially in the face of congestion.
    - jeroenhd 5y ago
      Networks aren't neutral either, even under net neutrality rules: you might lose your data uplink of the tower is at capacity and someone dials 911. I'm a proponent of weakening net neutrality for when lives are at stake, but that's hardly ever the case on the internet. The problem is that most non-neutral treatment is the result of business interests rather than the greater good.
    - zmgsabst 5y ago
      In what way is “emergency vehicles need special access” similar to “we need to charge Netflix more because ISPs oversold their networks while failing to upgrade”?
      - ThunderSizzle 5y ago
        Toll roads charge more for larger vehicles. Vehicle registration may be more expensive for heavier vehicles or vehicles with more wheels. Meanwhile, toll roads may have just as much traffic issues and no guarantee of average velocity. How is that not similar to ISPs throttling? Not that I care much either way. I care more about localities and states encouraging or enforcing monopolies.
- parkingrift 5y ago
  Bandwidth is already charged by consumption. What you’re suggesting here is to the idea that vehicles should be charged based on what they’re transporting. Sorry but that is preposterous. Weight is weight and should be considered as such. No cost preference for shipment of products that some private company likes.
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  If I pay you to bring me a package from <somewhere else>, all is well. If 10 other people pay you to bring them packages from <somewhere else>, all is well. If 100 want to pay you to bring them packages from <somewhere else> and you suddenly don't have enough manpower to deliver those packages... do you suddenly start charging <somewhere else> because they have too many people that want packages? No, because that would be ridiculous.
  - shukantpal 5y ago
    No it wouldn’t be ridiculous because both the sender and receiver are customers here
- imtringued 5y ago
  Your argument makes zero sense and is completely divorced from what you preach. I hate this direct form of hypocrisy. People pretend to be "righteous" and then act dishonest. Cloud providers already bill network traffic at extremely high prices. The cheap ones oversubscribe their connections, according to the motto "you get what you pay for". The current system is "use = cost". >For example, a common idea is that we should tax trucks more than other cars because they cause a large amount of damage to our roads. And this is exactly why we should have net neutrality. If there is net neutrality on roads then we can just tax by axle weight. If there is no net neutrality then road companies would come up with a weird classification system that is completely independent of axle weight. For example. S-Pedelecs in Germany are just unthrottled electric bicycles that go faster than 25km/h. They are basically classified as a moped even though they are much lighter. Road companies would then charge S-Pedelecs more because of what they are classified as instead of how much they weigh. Truck companies will then try to develop trucks that aren't classified as trucks to avoid those higher fees (VPNs). > Following that logic, the companies that encourage users to consume more bandwidth should be charged a price for that since they're the ones making money on it, and we don't want to raise costs on users. That makes no sense. Just charge all commercial internet connections by traffic or capacity (oversubscribing does not count). You are so far away from "use = cost" that it's not even funny. The amount of brain twisting that is going on here is insane.
mdasen 5y ago
Depending on how this is applied/interpreted, I could see reasons to oppose it. For example, there can be a lot of "lawful traffic" that is harmful to a network. T-Mobile's T&C say that these things are disallowed: "Uses applications which are designed for unattended use, automatic data feeds, automated machine-to-machine connections, or applications that are used in a way that degrades network capacity or functionality", "Uses applications which automatically consume unreasonable amounts of available network capacity". I'm sure someone here is going to "but fetching RSS automatically..." but I'm going to ignore those straw-man objections. If someone is doing something that harms the network and the enjoyment of other users, it does seem reasonable to restrict that. Likewise, many ISPs deprioritize data if a user has hit a certain threshold of usage. It isn't throttling, but they give priority to users who don't use as much data given the shared nature of the connection. That seems reasonable to me. It allows heavy users to use as much data as they want while light users aren't impacted by their heavy usage. Many mobile ISPs throttle types of content like video. That's certainly controversial, but has become common. > It also prohibits requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers This always makes me wonder if that means that ISPs must deliver free transit. Most people aren't really aware of how money is paid to transmit things over the internet. For example, let's say that I want to transmit a video to a Comcast customer in LA. Can I hand it off to them in NY and say "it's your problem now since you can't charge me to deliver the traffic"? Or do I have to get it within a certain distance of the customer and pay for the transit myself? If Comcast won't advertise BGP routes non-locally if someone isn't wiling to pay them transit, is that a violation? I know a lot of people say that they just want a "dumb pipe", but I think that's mostly because many companies are kinda scummy. We've seen ISPs do crappy things. But there is reasonable network management. For example, I've had friends who have worked at universities where 1% of the users end up consuming 50-75% of the bandwidth. They've done things like put BitTorrent traffic at a lower priority. They don't block it, but they do manage it so that the shared network works well for everyone. If a lab starts using a crazy amount of bandwidth, they don't want everyone else's usage to suffer. It's quite reasonable to manage traffic in good faith - and I think a lot of the no-management/dumb-pipe stuff comes from the fact that we've had some scummy ISPs.
- wmf 5y ago
jwommack 5y ago
The primary beneficiaries of this are basically Netflix and Google, no? My understanding is most of these policies have always been targeted at the large streaming services that are putting the most burden on the networks and who often already have special interconnect agreements. The claims that these policies would be aimed at small businesses seem largely to have not been realistic. The whole situation with lying about what you’re ad spend is getting you seems like a much bigger small internet business issue.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > My understanding is most of these policies have always been targeted at the large streaming services that are putting the most burden on the networks and who often already have special interconnect agreements. "large streaming services that are putting the most burden on the networks"? That is completely non-sensical. It is not streaming services that are creating a burden, it is the ISP's customers. The ISP's customers are asking for the bits. They are using their Internet service / connection to get what they want (video). Is HN 'causing' the traffic to flow over my ISP's pipes when I reply to comments, or is it me (the ISP customer) when I click on "reply"? The streaming services are not dumping bits on to the network like a chemical plant polluting a river. The streaming services are sending bits that the ISP's customers requested. If the ISPs can't deliver the traffic that their customers want then they need to architect their network to handle it. ISPs are selling access to the Internet, streaming service are on the Internet, and so ISPs need provide it or stop advertising that they're providing Internet access. The streaming services are paying for their Internet connection, and ISP's customers are paying for their Internet connection, and it is the job of the ISP to connect the two.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - moron4hire 5y ago
    But we (the ISPs) made assumptions about aggregate consumer bandwidth requirements back in the early 2000s and now they're cutting into shareholder value! Would someone please, PLEASE, think of the shareholders?!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
drdaeman 5y ago
> and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality protections by slowing down traffic at network interconnection points Here's an anecdote. Over 10 years ago, I worked for an ISP company in Russia. That was before they went draconian on the 'Net (beyond SORM-2, I mean) - I left around the time Russian government started to mandate blocking websites. Just to clarify - that was an age of rapid growth and users had a choice of ISPs (I had 7 possible to pick from), so providers had competed really seriously. Which is why net neutrality wasn't a thing - on the contrary, providers were incentivized to set up local FTP servers. Uh, y'know, for warez, though, of course, officially ISPs just "didn't knew" what users were doing there - but that was before streaming services; even Steam was quite a novelty at the time. Those FTPs had faster access speeds (traffic shaping was turned off for their IPs entirely, so up to 100Mbps when 10Mbps connectivity was the norm) and unaccounted traffic. It was mutually beneficial - providers had saved (a lot) on uplink utilization and customers had exchanged content at much faster speeds. In '00s there were even citywide LANs communities, which were torn down only because of malware onset. Those were wild times. Doing some funky shit like throttling certain traffic meant your users would be gone (people tolerated for a short while, then voted with their wallets). But we had to do this twice. First time it was disaster management, when the first uTP implementation happened. Users had updated their uTorrents and it was buggy and caused very high packet rate (and this is UDP we're talking about), so our edge routers started to choke on this UDP BitTorrent traffic. We had to identify those packets and push a rule that dropped them entirely. Second time was also about BitTorrent - in an university dorm, where we contracted to set up WiFi coverage - I don't remember the details but we had really struggled ensuring fair bandwidth distribution, as someone torrenting made network barely usable for others (because of radio interference, not bandwidth limitations), but we had to tune it down to make it work somehow. Another story from those times. We had started to receive tons of complaints that YouTube was performing poorly. We've spent days trying to figure out what the heck was wrong there, and realized the problem was only manifested through one of the upstream providers. They had no clue either, so the temporary solution was to push a a bunch of excessive AS-PATH elements in BGP announce to deprioritize routing YouTube traffic from that direction, then wait until someone upstream figures it all out. And yet another story is that we ran analytics (anonymized, we only looked at very coarse AS level traffic distribution) to understand where we talked to most and if we should peer with someone else to improve connectivity in those directions. And, of course, we had blocked ports, such as tcp/25 or tcp/445. Would've been a disaster if we wouldn't have. The morale of this is that as an ISP sometimes you have to violate neutrality in the interest of your customers, to ensure quality of service. Well, to think of it - QoS is inherently non-neutral since the whole point of it is to classify traffic and differentiate it. And sometimes it's hard to draw a line on what's fair and what's not. I mean, I questioned some things we did and only justified them as "well, I don't see any other options here to make it work". And I don't condone nor condemn those examples - just present them as an anecdote to say that there are always some nuances and sometimes things aren't exactly black and white. Though when people speak about NN in the US they talk about shitty anti-customer moves like throttling Netflix trying to squeeze some money out of this.
RajT88 5y ago
I know a fellow who works sales for a fiber backbone provider. He has a few tortured and circuitous arguments why it is totally fine. He is full of funny ideas which are silly. Often including long debunked ideas on race, gender, class, etc. Yes, he was born rich. How did you know?
jollybean 5y ago
"prohibits requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers" This is not 'Net Neutrality'. If data providers like Netflix want 'special service' then they can pay for it. 'Net Neutrality' is more like Carriers cannot charge more for email, than for games, than for messaging, than for something else. Carriers should be able to charge whatever they want for whatever QoS (Quality of Service). If Netflix wants more bandwidth with lower latency, fine, they can pay for that. But Carriers cannot arbitrary charge 'more' to Netflix because they are 'richer' or because of the type of content. Federal legislation needs to go further and separate content form data networks. AT&T has a vast Content Empire that is in direct competition with Netflix, this is a gigantic conflict of interest. AT&T can sell bytes of data at a quality of service. That's it. Maybe phones - so long as those phones can work on any network and other phones work on it's network. Content? No way. Same with cable distributors. And more difficult to articulate but Apple shouldn't be able to compete with those in the App Store, for example and by law be very 'neutral' there as well: they have to treat everyone the same.
- monkeywork 5y ago
  >If Netflix wants more bandwidth with lower latency, fine, they can pay for that. Why should Netflix pay for this? They aren't the one choosing to send traffic onto that network, the ISPs CLIENTS are. The ISP shouldn't have any ability to charge Netflix for actions their clients are taking - and they should have to treat all traffic that a client asks for equally. Can you imagine an electric company trying to get some sort of fee from Samsung because they sell a lot of electronics that people use in their houses...
  - jollybean 5y ago
    Netflix pays for connectivity just like consumers do. They can pay for better QoS, which will result in better QoS for their customers if they want. Or their customers can, or both. "Can you imagine an electric company trying to get some sort of fee from Samsung because they sell a lot of electronics that people use in their houses..." That analogy doesn't work because Samsung, in that case, has nothing to do with the data flow. Netflix obviously does. Netflix should not have to pay special fees because they are 'Netflix' or 'it's video' or 'it's movies' - but they should definitely have to pay fees relevant to QoS of their upload bandwidth. Just like you, I and everyone else.
HWR_14 5y ago
I like T-Mobile's zero-rating solution. Specific classes of data (sub-480p video) would be zero rated for all servers who filled out paperwork, no source-based discrimination. That made sense. Also, kinda obviously, government emergency services (911, weather alerts, etc) being zero-rated just make sense. I don't want zero rating to let FB subsidize plans that allow free access to FB. I think we can find some uses that avoid dystopia.
- Bilal_io 5y ago
  Well, I'd like my ISP to get their nose out of my traffic and stop sniffing like a coke addict. One of Net Neutrality arguments is that you sell me speed (and bandwidth where data caps apply, but shouldn't) and I can do whatever I want. It is I, that pays for the service, not Netflix nor Google or any platform, and if I want to watch YouTube in 4K because my speed allows me to, or if I want to turn my PC into a seeding machine for Linux iso images, I should be free to do so. So there is an argument for DNS-over-HTTPS there on top of the NN one.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    It doesn't stop you from watching in 4K video. It just provides another option. But critically, this is an option that you, the customer, negotiate with T-Mobile. You contract for X gigs plus unlimited sub-480p traffic. And tiered data (X gigs of high-speed, Y or infinite gigs of low speed) is really common in cellphone contracts. This is just making it clear you can get the low speed data without having to burn your high speed up first.
    - vel0city 5y ago
      > X gigs of high-speed, Y or infinite gigs of low speed But then why even bother with the paperwork to get approved to be a part of the program? Why doesn't T-Mo just ignore usage below some average throughput speed for any traffic?
      - HWR_14 5y ago
dehrmann 5y ago
> I don't understand how anyone could oppose this. Easy. If you operate a cell network, your bandwidth is extremely limited, so when it's congested, you throttle streaming video content so everything else is still fast. The same problems affect wired ISPs, but it's easier to run more fiber (often from a local office, not to homes) than to get more spectrum, install more towers, or create the next generation of wireless broadband. The easiest, absurd case of cell networks falling over is at music festivals. They just don't have the bandwidth to handle thousands of people in a small area.
- beowulfey 5y ago
  Operating costs for upgrading networks are obviously better served going into increasing net profits than actually building improved infrastructure. From a capitalist point of view it just makes good business sense to lobby for not having to upgrade the networks because people have no (or at least very few) competitors they could turn to as alternatives.
wodenokoto 5y ago
Recently I ran out of mobile data, and using my phone providers app, I couldn’t buy any additional data, because I had no data left to connect to them. There are definitely circumstances where it makes sense to give users free access to data, just like how it makes sense that you can call toll free numbers. The opportunity for abuse is probably large enough to warrant that we can’t have nice things.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Your ISP is not charging itself to connect to you.
nijave 5y ago
Afaik there was some somewhat legitimate concern it would effect mixed content networks. E.g. networks that carry voice, video, and internet or networks that provide different "tiers" (business vs consumer) Theoretically it should make access cheaper by allowing ISPs oversubscribe networks while still guaranteeing performance to certain customers but, in practice, I find it highly unlikely that savings would ever get passed on to the customer (instead converted into "shareholder value")

IMcD23 5y ago

Permalink: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-any-judges-who-will-block-california-net-neutrality-law/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-a...

dang 5y ago
Fixed above. Thanks!

prirun 5y ago

Don't worry, they'll find one. Just haven't flashed the right amount of money in front of one yet.

vmception 5y ago
And they have an infinite time horizon and attention span while we do not

CoastalCoder 5y ago

Can someone explain a technical issue I see with net neutrality? From a network engineering perspective, it seems sensible to me that CDN servers are located as close as possible to end users. So I assume that implies residing in whatever data centers the ISPs use at their edge. Is there some way to get the networking-efficiency benefits of those colo arrangements while still having net neutrality?

wmf 5y ago
Most definitions of net neutrality simply don't prevent ISPs from hosting CDN nodes (although it would be nice if ISPs treated all CDNs the same). Likewise net neutrality doesn't prohibit direct connections between broadband ISPs and content providers because such connections generally benefit everyone involved.
eikenberry 5y ago
> Is there some way to get the networking-efficiency benefits of those colo arrangements while still having net neutrality? Torrent-like algorithms do this. They localize the content while maintaining neutrality of services.
arjvik 5y ago
I'm not sure I understand - why is edge datacenter colocation incompatible with bet neutrality? Fairly confident it existed pre-Ajit Pai.
randrews 5y ago
I've been asking this exact question for years. I feel like most people got some well-meaning propaganda on this and see net neutrality as an anti-censorship thing (which, hooray for anti-censorship) without thinking through all the totally reasonable and useful things that would violate the letter of it.
- CyberRabbi 5y ago
  I don’t fully understand how anti-censorship is a virtue when defending Google and Netflix but then becomes a vice when defending regular people’s ability to not be arbitrarily banned on Twitter.

hateful 5y ago

If I remember correctly, the issue with Net Neutrality legislation (as with almost all legislation) isn't what you think it is. It had to do with services like Netflix being able to host servers within ISPs to make them close to the end users. Not sure what article I had read though, it was quite a few years back.

wmf 5y ago
There have been several real issues not just one, but I don't think colocation was one of them.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Collocation is how Netflix solved the actual problem which was ISPs not wanting to give additional free transit to Level3.

paxys 5y ago

The link doesn't go anywhere FYI. What are people here even commenting on?

wallbrownf 5y ago
I couldn't get anywhere on the provided URL either. I believe this is the correct URL. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-any-judges-who-will-block-california-net-neutrality-law/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-a...
ademarre 5y ago
As IMcD23 commented, the real link is here: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-any-judges-who-will-block-california-net-neutrality-law/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-a... It would be nice if the mods/dang would update the link.
- altairprime 5y ago
  Consider emailing the mods/dang using the Footer contact link, so that they're aware of this problem and can resolve it.
- intunderflow 5y ago
  I'm not sure who has the power to edit titles / links, I've had weird (incorrect) edits to them as well One time one of my post's titles was changed from "end-to-end encryption" to "end-to-encryption encryption"
dang 5y ago
Fixed now. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31118005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31118005.

jmyeet 5y ago

The whole net neutrality saga just exposed the deep regulatory capture between ISPs and the FCC (the Republican Commissioners at least). Pai's argument for repealing net neutrality was that it wasn't a Federal government concern. That was originally what prompted California to institute these rules. But suddenly it wasn't a state issue either. Weird. The US has some of the most expensive Internet access in the world. In most places it's pretty crap too. Many places have no competition. Some providers are in clear breach of contract in not providing customers service as they promised to do. But apparently all that's not enough. We get the argument that the likes of Netflix are "pushing" their data at no cost onto "their" network. This is such a ridiculous argument and is nothing more than an effort to extort Netflix and other streaming services because it's eroding their cable TV services. No one is "pushing" data onto the network. Customers are pulling that data and those customers, by definition, are already paying for the bandwidth and the network access. But this doesn't stop lobbyists pushing this narrative onto Luddite elected officials. It's double-dipping. No more, no less. I really hope CAlifornia's net neutrality laws stand and get copied by other states.

charcircuit 5y ago
>Customers are pulling that data and those customers, by definition, are already paying for the bandwidth Downloading bandwidth is free. The person who is uploading is the person who pays.
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  You might get that deal on a server, but not a mobile or broadband contract. Now that I think of it, I don't know whether my capped mobile usage counts uploads towards my contracted limits. I assume it does.
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    From my understanding this will still apply to the ISP you are using for mobile or broadband. How ISPs push along these costs to their customers is up to them, but that is different from the price of sending data between an ISP and Netflix for example.

unityByFreedom 5y ago

The link here appears to be broken. Here is the correct one, fyi @dang https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-any-judges-who-will-block-california-net-neutrality-law/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-a...

altairprime 5y ago
@dang doesn't actually do anything to get Dang's attention. You can write the mods using the footer Contact link to ask them to fix the link, though.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dang 5y ago
Thanks! Fixed now. The submitted URL (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-any-judges-who-will-block-california-net-neutrality-law/#p3 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-a...) did a weird redirect. (altairprime is correct btw. I just saw this by accident.)

JJMcJ 5y ago

A few ISPs, like Sonic, maintain neutrality by their own policies. Then I read not only of throttling but of horrors like replacing ads on websites with different ones that pay the ISP.

RealStickman_ 5y ago
That's why every website should use HTTPS.
- brezelgoring 5y ago
  I don't know if that would change things, they know the whole SSL Handshake by virtue of being the ISP. I'm not sure anything can save you here.
  - Cerium 5y ago
    I think the point of SSL is that parties in the middle with full view of the communications still cannot view or manipulate payload.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    That's a man in the middle attack. What's absurd is that the ISP you are paying is doing the attack.
  - RealStickman_ 5y ago
    That would only be possible if they proxy your connections and you have accepted their certificate. The entire point of SSL is to create an End-to-End encrypted connection between you and your target server. That includes anyone who can view and try to manipulate your traffic.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

iaw 5y ago

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-any-judges-who-will-block-california-net-neutrality-law/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/isps-cant-find-a... <-- correct link

dang 5y ago
Fixed above. Thanks!

jimjames88 5y ago

dalbasal 5y ago

Net neutrality really highlights the ratchet effect that arises wherever a conflict of interest between the general public and special interests exists. They never stop. Legislative lobbying. Massive Legal efforts. Attempts at influencing the executive/government activities. Once they've made a gain, they rarely lose it.

Proven 5y ago

OGforces 5y ago

[dead]

username190 5y ago

For those who are thinking, "why do we need Net Neutrality? When have you actually seen an example of providers throttling content?" - there's a pretty egregious one that's been present for years now. For those with American mobile phone plans, switch over to LTE or 5G, and run two "speed tests": One on Ookla Speedtest[0], and one on Netflix's fast.com[1]. If you don't have the top-tier plan on T-Mobile or AT&T, or have the $10/line "Premium Streaming" addon on Verizon (which pushes, but doesn't remove, the throttle), your speeds on Speedtest should appear quite a bit faster than on Netflix. If you're seeing very low speeds on both tests, there's more likely something else at play (wireless interference, circuit congestion, poor signal, etc). California's Net Neutrality law specifically outlaws this practice, and this is one of the big reasons carriers are upset about it. I'd recommend reading the text [2] of the law - it's fairly short and easy to understand, with definitions provided. [0] https://speedtest.net https://speedtest.net [1] https://fast.com https://fast.com [2] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB822 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

exabrial 5y ago

Net Neutrality is the greatest example of two sides that want the same outcome but can't get past their petty differences. The only reason Republicans want this blocked is because they see the writing on the wall when the state gets totalitarian control over communication (oddly enough, playing out right now in Russia). Democrats don't want to do deal with the Monopolistic behavior of ISPs, which is just an alternate version of totalitarian control. The common solution to appease both sides: break up the fucking monopolies into small township sized chunks. Both sides would support it. Why this is so hard?

otachack 5y ago
Because they're at each other's throats and not willing to cross the aisle to avoid political blowback from their own side. The state of this country is a shame and we obviously need support for more parties with diversified political viewpoints.

matt321 5y ago

Why shouldn't a company or person be discriminated against based on content type? content type is not a protected category. Ultimately, net neutrality is good for the rich since it lower their cost so it will all be supported by the gov. If you people didn't already know, the the rich are the ones who make the calls in the USA. I don't want to bring them down though, I want to elevate my self to their level.

MR4D 5y ago

Net neutrality sucks for one reason - it makes paid fast lanes illegal. Hear me out . . . A connection to the internet should be basically a dumb pipe, not filtering, accelerating, or slowing down anything. However . . . An ISP should be able to have a side-pipe to a specific service that provides for unregulated access to something thru that pipe. For instance you might watch Netflix all the time and want to pay a couple bucks for a side-pipe access to Netflix at a consistent throughput. Or maybe you work in finance and want access to Bloomberg, or Fidelity. Or maybe you work remotely and would love to access your Microsoft email and SharePoint with higher upstream throughput. Or maybe you’re a gamer and want a lower latency link to your game. Why can’t you have that? It is things like that which drive me crazy. The intent of the law is great but the implementation is lacking.